Context and Challenge

Since February 2022, Hungary has recorded over 5 million border crossings, with approximately 61,500 Ukrainian refugees residing in the country by late 2024. In Budapest, the Humanitarian Cash Transfer (HCT) program initially run with UNICEF and later transitioned fully to the municipality delivered financial assistance during harsh winter periods, with call-center grievance handling, referral pathways, and post-distribution monitoring to ensure accountability.

However, core operational challenges emerged:

• A lack of a unified platform led to data fragmentation and inefficiencies.
• Fraud risks surfaced, such as duplicate applications.
• The municipal landscape 23 autonomous districts with varied IT maturity and processes made city-wide coordination difficult.
• Heavy reliance on paper and spreadsheets hindered reporting and oversight.

The Mayor’s Office, with UNICEF support, set out to implement a centralized Information Management System (IMS) to consolidate data, improve collaboration, and enhance reporting while addressing critical government concerns around:

• Technical integration and compatibility
• Data security and privacy
• Customization and localization
• Transition from paper/Excel to a unified digital platform
• Financial sustainability and support
• Building a system that scales and integrates seamlessly

Why Primero IMS

UNICEF recommended Primero IMS a globally recognized, open-source case management platform designed for vulnerable populations (children, refugees, survivors of violence). Key capabilities include:

• Secure, role-based access control
• Configurable forms and workflows
• Case tracking and reporting
• Multi-language support

Budapest’s IT team initially faced installation challenges, largely due to unfamiliarity with Ruby on Rails, which raised maintainability concerns. The team temporarily paused Primero and considered alternatives: open-source CRMs (insufficient for social casework), commercial case management tools (costly, user-based licensing), and a fully custom build (time, cost, and failure risk). Global benchmarks show 50–75% of custom software projects miss timelines or budgets by 2–3x an unacceptable risk under tight deadlines.

UNICEF engaged an external consultant (author) to run a fair, evidence-based comparison, clarify functional requirements specific to refugee and family case management, and surface long-term sustainability considerations, including future expansion to other vulnerable groups.

The Turning Point: Hands-On Validation

Through guided demonstrations, prototyping, and side-by-side testing, the municipality’s team identified four decisive advantages of Primero:

• Role-based access and security: A top priority given sensitive data and audit requirements. Primero’s mature permissions model aligned with field realities and compliance needs.
• Scalability and adaptability: Although rooted in child protection, Primero’s architecture supports additional data models and workflows for family-based case management and beyond.
• Integration potential: Even without Ruby expertise, the team could build external services in their preferred language and integrate via APIs, avoiding deep modifications to Primero’s core.
• Proven track record: Large-scale deployments worldwide reassured leadership of stability, performance, and community support.

As Heim Ágoston Tonka, Product Owner at the Municipality of Budapest, noted: “One of the most important things for us was proper role management. Security was a top priority, and we also needed to align user permissions with how social services operate in the field. Primero already had this built-in, and that was a big advantage.”

Decision and Leadership Buy-In

A comprehensive report presented to municipal leadership compared Primero vs. custom-build across security, scalability, compliance, cost, and time-to-value. Key decision factors:

• Advanced role-based access and audit readiness
• Realistic timeline under a seven-month window
• Integration pathway with existing municipal systems
• Customizability via configuration and external services
• Long-term sustainability with a global community and roadmap

Leadership approved Primero as the city’s core case management system for refugee support.

Implementation: From Blueprint to Operations

The implementation followed five phases:

1. Technical configuration and customization
2. Systems integration
3. Training and capacity building
4. Pilot testing and user feedback
5. Scaling and full deployment

Key customizations:

• Expanded data fields beyond child protection to cover family composition, housing, employment support, and service provider data.
• Workflow adjustments to mirror municipal procedures and frontline realities.
• Rigorous role-based access configuration aligned to strict data protection requirements.
• Multi-language setup for Ukrainian and Hungarian contexts.

Systems integration highlights:

• A custom, non-Ruby external service was built to monitor shelter capacities in real time (beds, rooms), connected bidirectionally with Primero.
• Unified authentication plans using Azure B2C for secure, centralized identity and access management.
• Power BI dashboards integrating Primero and the custom plugin for robust reporting and oversight.

Crucially, the team avoided forking or altering Primero’s core code, preserving upgradeability and security compliance.

Training and adoption:

• Technical team training on maintenance, RBAC, and troubleshooting.
• Social workers and case managers trained on data entry, workflows, and collaboration.
• Leadership orientation on analytics and decision-support features.

A pilot in selected districts surfaced usability improvements and performance optimizations. Iterations were incorporated before scaling city-wide. By project end, onboarding was underway, test data and pipelines were validated, Azure B2C integration was pending finalization, and dashboards were live.

Security and Compliance

Budapest conducted both internal and government audits. Identified risks were mitigated or assigned for resolution within the Primero roadmap and local configuration. Azure B2C integration further strengthens authentication and access control. Hosting on municipal servers aligned with Budapest’s standard DevOps model and citizen data policies.

Lessons Learned

1. Collaborative decision-making is essential
2. Early and continuous engagement of IT, service providers, UNICEF, and external expertise produced balanced, reality-based decisions.
3. Balance customization with standardization
4. Leveraging Primero’s configurable core while building external components accelerated delivery and reduced risk.
5. Invest in training and capacity building
6. Building in-house skills technical and operational reduced long-term dependency and improved adoption.
7. Integrate with existing systems
8. Interoperability (authentication, provider databases, BI) drove adoption and minimized disruption.
9. Security cannot be an afterthought
10. Role-based access, audits, and identity integration (Azure B2C) addressed stringent compliance requirements.

Future Outlook

• Expansion to broader social services: Homeless services, families in crisis, and at-risk youth.
• Strengthening local ownership: A dedicated municipal support team and ongoing staff training.
• Enhanced analytics: Deeper Power BI insights and predictive analytics for evidence-based policy.
• Continuous improvement: Regular feedback loops from frontline users and administrators.
• Regional knowledge-sharing: Budapest’s model can inform other European cities navigating similar challenges.

Conclusion

Budapest’s Primero IMS journey demonstrates how a high-income, decentralized urban setting can rapidly deploy a robust, secure, and scalable case management platform under pressure without resorting to risky, time-consuming bespoke development. The strategic blend of configuration, integrations in preferred programming languages, role-based security, and structured training turned early challenges into a foundation for long-term social sector transformation.

As Heim Ágoston Tonka summarized, the decision wasn’t only about features it was about trust in a platform used successfully in more demanding contexts. With Primero, Budapest now has a unified, auditable, and extensible IMS to support refugees today and a broader constellation of vulnerable groups tomorrow.

References and Further Reading

• UNICEF Digital: Primero Information Management System – About and Use Cases
• Primero Official Site – About Us and Community